


must be love on the brain (that's got me feelin' this way)

by thewinterose



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket (Anime 2019), Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jealousy, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension, also what I like to call this fic: an outside perspective on two hopeless idiots, also! some of the stuff referenced in this fic will not make sense if you haven’t the manga, but not in the way you guys think!, or: the wonders of communication (or rather the lack of it), so spoilers??, the fic title is a song lyric because do you honestly expect any different from me?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 02:54:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19033309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewinterose/pseuds/thewinterose
Summary: He glances over at her, and his amber eyes shine when under the light of the moon and the stars and the city. His lips are quirked up in a crooked, boyish grin. He looks so beautiful that it cuts her somewhere inside.“Yeah,” he says. His voice is hardly above a whisper as he speaks and looks at her. “Yeah.”Or:Tohru has a secret admirer. Everyone reacts to it accordingly. Except Kyo.





	must be love on the brain (that's got me feelin' this way)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palamig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palamig/gifts).



> Hi everyone! So I wish I could say I came up with this wonderful fic idea, but alas, I did not. I got inspired by a lovely post on tumblr and wrote this fic with it loosely in mind. I owe all the credit to [kamui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamui/pseuds/kamui) and her lovely post. Thank you for letting me write this!

The whole issue starts when Arisa catches a glimpse of a flustered, jittery kid hurriedly shoving a note into a locker. She’s seen stuff like that before. It’s a consequence of being in a high school filled with hormonal, starry-eyed, romantic teenagers, so she doesn’t think much of it.

Of course, that changes when she, Saki, and Tohru walk to Tohru’s locker.

At the time, she doesn’t remember if they’re speaking of anything of much importance. She thinks she may have been saying something to Hanajima, when Tohru gasps and the conversation is forgotten.

She and Saki switch their attention to her immediately, worried, but the sight of their friend, flushed all the way up to her hairline, her hand fisted over her heart, directs their eyes to the note she clutches in her other hand.

Saki presses first. “Tohru, is everything alright?”

Tohru seems to remember where she is and who is around her, because she flashes panicked, wide brown eyes at them and very obviously tries to hide the note behind her back.

The sight is funny it its own very sad, very pathetically conspicuous way. Arisa would laugh if she wasn’t so curious.

_A note? Why is she so damn afraid of a note?_

Tohru laughs loudly and unnecessarily, still keeping the slip of paper out of sight. She moves her arm and attempts to lean against her locker casually, but all she manages to do is slam it shut with her elbow and accidentally jab her cheekbone with her knuckles. She winces and glares balefully at her hand, somehow seeming to forget about the two girls in front of her.

“Tohru?” Saki asks again, less gently. She looks worried, and Arisa is beginning to share some of her anxiety. Something about that note was making Tohru nervous and clumsier than usual. She knew for a fact that if someone wrote Tohru a threatening letter, she wouldn’t share that information with her friends. She always saw sharing her feelings as something of a burden, equal to a demand on other people, even though they never were.

Arisa steps closer to her friend. “Tohru, what’s in the note?”

“What note?” she asks. She shifts on her feet, her eyes moving to the side. Tohru never makes eye contact when she’s lying.

Arisa reaches forward, grabbing her friend’s hand gently. Tohru looks up at her, her face flushed and her cheeks puffed. In frustration probably.

“We saw the note. Can we see it?”

Tohru bites her lip. She shifts again, looks up at them, and then sighs once more.

“Okay, but… don’t- don’t laugh,” she says quietly, her voice almost a whisper.

The anticipation seems to build as she removes her hand from behind her back and places the note in Arisa’s outstretched palm. She unfolds the crumpled paper and holds it up to her face. She feels Saki’s cheek brush against her hair as she peers over her shoulder to read it too.

_“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,_

_My love as deep; the more I give to thee,_

_The more I have, for both are infinite.” – Anonymous_

 

Arisa gasps, at first in some instinctual, girlish reaction to seeing something so romantic, and so- well if she’s honest- cliché given to her friend. It’s like something out of a teen rom-com, or one of those popular American movies.

Saki hums from over her shoulder before reaching up and grabbing the note from Arisa’s loose grip. She peruses the contents of the note again. “They used Shakespeare. _Romeo and Juliet_.”

Arisa groans a bit and snatches the note back. She rolls her eyes. “God, can they be anymore cliché?” she says, smiling wryly.

Tohru whimpers slightly in front of them, and both girls stop immediately, both of their hearts melting over how embarrassed and helpless she looks.

Arisa can’t lie. Tohru really made that damsel in distress look really work for her.

She coos and brings the girl in for a hug, rubbing her cheek against hers affectionately. “Aw, Tohru, we’re sorry for poking fun. You probably feel really happy right now.”

Tohru startles, and Arisa feels her face move when Tohru begins shaking her head vigorously. She steps back and grabs the note from her hand.

“I don’t feel happy. I feel…” she wavers, running a hand through her long hair, biting her lip, clearly searching for the right words to say. “I feel- I feel flattered, I think. But I don’t feel happy.”

Saki moves to her side, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Why wouldn’t you feel happy?” she asks gently.

Tohru leans her temple against their friend’s shoulder and starts rolling her head around in confusion. She closes her eyes and bites her bottom lip again.

Arisa looks at her in concern. If she keeps biting her lip like that, they’ll get chapped. Maybe she and Hanajima could get her a chapstick. One of the cherry ones she liked so much.

“I don’t know why,” she says, moving to open her locker. She moves away from Hanajima and takes the note to put back inside. Her eyes look far away as she speaks, her back turned towards her open locker door.

“I mean, the idea that someone thinks of me in that way is nice. It makes me feel-“

“Pretty,” Arisa offers.

“Desired,” Saki adds.

Tohru blushes again, trying to hide behind her curtain of long brown hair. “Wanted,” she corrects softly. “And every girl wants to feel that way. At least once. But not if it’s not by the person that I- I mean, that _they_ want too.”

Arisa and Saki don’t miss the slip up, nor do they miss the wistful longing that flares up in her eyes as she talks about it. She doesn’t need to say it, but they both know who she’s thinking about.

“Every girl wants to feel what way?” a deep, decidedly male, decidedly distinctive voice interrupts, and Tohru startles, yelping loudly, and bangs the back of head against the locker door.

“Kyo-kun!” she exclaims, somehow managing to sound wistfully breathless and pained all at once.

“Shit!” he curses at the same time. He moves around to her front and pulls her gently away from the locker door, leaning above her and closing it behind her head.

He shifts back to look at her, his fiery eyes tender with concern and affection, the palm of his large hand rubbing the back of Tohru’s injured head, and Arisa realizes that this is what Tohru wants.

Not some pretty verses taken from one of literature’s more well-known tragic romances, but this: the soft concern in Kyo’s eyes, the rumble of his voice as he asks if she’s okay, the feeling of his fingers sliding through her hair. The delicate smile on her face, tenuous and vulnerable, speaks of this clearly enough.

She glances over at Saki and she sees that same sense of realization, but of a sadder, more melancholic sort. Because they have known of Tohru’s growing crush for a while now. Practically anyone with eyes and a sense of atmosphere knew. But somehow, the sight in front of them seems more real, more raw, more heart-stoppingly romantic than any Shakespeare quote.

 “You good now?” he asks, his voice gruff, but fond, and his shoulders relax when Tohru giggles and nods again.

“Wait, so what were you guys talking about before?” he asks, crossing his arms and leaning casually against the lockers, peering down at her.

Another flush rises high on Tohru’s cheeks, and Arisa can’t decide if it’s because of Kyo’s proximity to her or her embarrassment at his question.

Regardless of the reason, it makes Arisa simultaneously want to tell him to shove off and mind his own business, and tell him what happened down to the detail, just to see his reaction. She doesn’t know Kyo’s feelings for her friend exactly, but she has a good guess of where his attentions are focused.

Kyo looks around when his words are met with silence. He furrows his brows in confusion. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

Suddenly his eyes widen and a subtle blush blooms over his face, high on his admittedly nice cheekbones. “Is it like a _girl thing_? You know, or something?”

A sigh sounds from behind them, thick with exasperation, and they all turn to find Yuki walking over, Haru and Momiji following close at his heels.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve been asking Honda-san inappropriate questions,” Yuki says tiredly, folding his arms.

The flush on Kyo’s face grows in heat and intensity, and he sputters in outraged disbelief. He pushes away from the lockers but stays near Tohru.

“Inappropriate questions? Who the hell do you think I am? Some kind of pervert? Fuck off,” he spits furiously, his cheeks going redder with every word, if possible.

Yuki just shrugs and rolls his eyes, but offers no answer.

Momiji skips around him and sidles up next to Tohru. He grabs her hand and leans against her shoulder, before moving to peer over her shoulder, his brow furrowing in curiosity. His next words seem to happen as if they were in slow motion; a cruel trick of fate, for all that seems to follow after.

“Is that Shakespeare?”

Tohru yelps again, yanking her hand away from his to slam the locker door closed. She turns back to face him, her eyes wide and frazzled.

“What’s Shakespeare?” she asks, definitely sounding panicked. Arisa would feel bothered by how obvious she was in her attempts to hide the note, if the sight of her doing so didn’t stir so much pity.

Momiji backs away a bit, his face screwed up in childish confusion. _Almost too childish,_ Arisa thinks. To the point of being purposeful.

“Yeah. ‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea.’ That’s Shakespeare. It’s from _Romeo and Juliet_.”

Yuki looks at Tohru in puzzlement. “I didn’t know you enjoyed Shakespeare, Honda-san,” he says.

Tohru sighs loudly through her nose, leaning her forehead against her locker and shifting to look Yuki in the eye. She falters after a few seconds, chewing nervously on her bottom lip. “I don’t,” she admits lowly.

Yuki’s confusion seems to heighten. “Then why would you have a note that has a quote from _Romeo and Juliet_ on it- oh.” He stops, interrupting himself, the pieces finally coming together in his mind. His grey eyes jump back to hers in shock. _“Oh.”_

Kyo speaks up again, clearly frustrated by Yuki understanding the situation before him. “What is it? What’s going on?”

Yuki looks to Tohru in confirmation, but when she cringes away from his gaze, he sets his jaw resolutely and turns to Kyo.

“It’s none of your business. Stay out of it,” he commands with a tone of finality.

This seems to anger Kyo, because he moves closer to Yuki, butting his head into the other boy’s personal space. He grabs the front of his uniform in his fist, bunching the pristine fabric with his fingers.

“And who the hell are you to tell me what to do,” he growls, and Arisa notices how Tohru’s face switches from embarrassed to concerned to resolute in just a flicker of a second.

She hurriedly opens her locker and takes the note before grabbing the back of Kyo’s shirt, turning his attention away from an irritated looking Yuki.

“It’s a love note!” she exclaims breathlessly, her eyes wide and earnest, her breath hitched.

The moment feels as though poised on a knife’s edge, like any sudden movement could either shatter the atmosphere or leave it hanging in stasis, like this one moment could determine the future, as ridiculous as it seems.

Kyo looks down at the note, then at Tohru, then down at the note again. His eyes rove over the words once, twice, three times, reading them over and over in quick succession, before landing back on the girl in front of him, open and vulnerable as she is, waiting for his reaction.

It almost hurts, honestly, for how desperate she seems to be for it. It’s in the tense line of her shoulders, in the painful way she practically chews through her already reddened lips, in the breathless way that she watches him. And in this, Arisa discovers that she’s eager for his reaction too.

His face flickers for moment, a twitch occurring at his lips, pulling them into a frown. His brows furrow into something like a resigned sadness, a jealousy so minute it could almost be mistaken for melancholy, for painful longing, but in a second it’s gone. His face is smoothed over into a careful, smooth passivity.

“Oh, is that it?” he asks tonelessly, moving away from Yuki, who looks about two seconds away from face-palming. “Good for you.”

Tohru steps back, the plain disbelief on her face a sharp contrast to Kyo’s inexpression.

“Good for…” she wavers, unable to finish. She takes another step away from him, but Kyo doesn’t seem to notice, so focused he seems to be on himself.

Arisa almost wants to punch him. Tohru looks so confused, so distressingly heartbroken, and the idiot in front of her, _the braindead moron_ , can’t even look at her. He can’t even notice the pain he’s clearly putting her through.

But Kyo doesn’t meet her gaze. He shoves his hands into his pockets and stares down the crowded hallway, his eyes far away. The only indication that he’s feeling anything is the muscle that twitches in his jawbone every time he clenches it. “Yeah. Good for you. I mean, every girl wants a boyfriend right? That’s probably what you were talking about before right?” he asks, finally turning to her. And Arisa wants to punch this self-sacrificing, well-intentioned, oblivious idiot again and again until he can only see stars for the rest of his natural born life.

Tohru swallows loudly, blinking rapidly, before crumpling up the note and shoving it in her school bag. Everyone is silent around her, all of them seeming to exude a collective mix of pity and sympathy for the blatantly heartbroken girl.

Arisa wants to pull her in for a hug. She looks like she got sucker-punched in the gut.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, maybe.”

And then she’s off, heading minutes earlier to a class that she doesn’t need to be in yet.

Arisa turns around, leveling a glare at a blank-faced, tight-jawed Kyo, but even she can’t muster the energy to stay mad at him.

His eyes follow Tohru the entire time she walks down the hall, his eyes pained, but there’s something even sadder dwelling in their midst. Something that seems to make this classically trivial exchange verge on the edge of tragic.

Acceptance.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He finds her later on the roof.

She bundled herself up before climbing out of her bedroom window in some old, ratty college sweater that allegedly belonged to her father, and some of her favorite fuzzy socks; a gift from Momiji once.

She doesn’t know why she came up here, for all it seems to do is remind her of him, but she sought out this place all the same, spurred on by some simultaneous masochistic and self-soothing urge. She can’t help it. The roof has good memories, even when she is in the midst of torturing herself with a recent bad one.

Tohru honestly doesn’t know what she expected. She wants to say nothing. Before today, she would’ve said nothing. But that blank, impassive look on Kyo’s face when she showed him something so personal, so romantic, something that clearly showed that she was- at least to someone- _wanted,_ and he-

He-

“He did nothing,” she whispers to herself, bringing her knees in close to her chest.

But what did she want, honestly? For him to go on some jealous rampage? A confession of his feelings? An acknowledgement of her own? What?

_What did she want?_

Tohru groans and rests her forehead against her kneecaps, shivering when the night air breeze blows through her hair and ruffles her sleep shorts.

She was an idiot. A hopeless idiot. She avoided him when they got home, hardly sparing him a glance, and it’s not like Kyo made it hard for her. All he seemed to do at the dinner table was eat silently and chuckle darkly to himself at random points, as if in anger or self-deprecation.

Yuki tried to lighten the atmosphere at first by attempting to make small talk and telling her embellished stories about his student council friends, but she could hardly muster a smile at his efforts, far too consumed by the bitter acid that lined her throat, and the rock that took up residence in the pit of her stomach.

It was shameful the way she acted. The least she could’ve done was smile. Even if she didn’t feel like it. Even if it hurt.

The sound of footsteps on the ladder off to the side catch her attention, and the unmistakable orange hue of his hair makes her want to fling herself off the roof.

She doesn’t want to talk to him; to anyone. She can’t find it in herself to look at him and smile, even for the briefest moment.

His head pops over the edge of the roof and his eyes meet hers in the glow of the moonlight.

He smiles softly and she wants to cry.

“Hey,” he greets, climbing onto the roof nimbly and settling himself down beside her.

“Hi,” she answers back, her voice barely audible above the nighttime song of the cicadas and the wind. She looks away from him and pulls her knees in tighter to her chest, afraid of looking vulnerable. Afraid that she already is.

“I didn’t know you would be up here,” he remarks lightly, leaning onto the roof by the palms of his hands.

It concerns her whenever he does that. The tile bites into his flesh there and leaves welts when he sits like that for too long.

“It’s calming. The moon is nice to look at when it’s full,” she answers lightly, voice soft.

He glances over at her, and his amber eyes shine when under the light of the moon and the stars and the city. His lips are quirked up in a crooked, boyish grin. He looks so beautiful that it cuts her somewhere inside.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice is hardly above a whisper as he speaks and looks at her. “Yeah.”

She feels awkward then. Awkward and vulnerable and gutted whenever he looks or speaks or breathes beside her. She wants to leave but she can’t find it in herself to move, as if held down by some invisible force.

She looks away from him and forces herself to stare at the moon silently.

He’s quiet too, and the breeze stills, but the cicadas still sing.

“So, um.” He clears his throat and passes a hand through his orange fringe. “So, about your boyfriend.”

Tohru bites down on her lip hard and forces herself to keep her gaze straight. “What boyfriend?” she asks quietly. She can feel her nails press moons onto her thighs.

“The guy with the _Romeo and Juliet_ quote. Your secret admirer or whatever.”

He sounds like he’s making an effort to stay nonchalant, to sound happy for her, but it seems forced. Everything in his manner, from his casual stance to the tone of his voice to the quirk of his smile seems false. But Tohru doesn’t let herself believe it. It only hurts if she does.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“No, but he might turn out to be. You know, if he ever got the courage to stop writing notes and actually ask you out like a normal person.”

At this, she glances over at him. Still casual. Still smiling. Still false.

She feels helpless and aching. She wants him to stop talking about this but she can’t without letting him know that something is wrong. And then he might ask why, and then-

And then nothing. She can’t let him see anything.

It feels like she’s wading in foreign waters, trying to swim and keep afloat in an ocean that’s working against her. The currents are unfamiliar and daunting. She’s not used to this. She’s not used to not being able to be honest with Kyo- the one person who told her again and again that he would never resent her presence, her emotional dependence and the ugliness of it.

She told him about her _father._ She used to think that she could tell him anything.

“What if I don’t want one?” she asks him. She wants to wince at her tone. She almost sounds angry. She’s surprised when she realizes that she is.

Kyo raises an eyebrow at her. “A boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t every girl want a boyfriend?” he counters.

“Not all the time.”

Kyo shifts closer, craning his neck down to look her squarely in the eyes. “You don’t want a boyfriend then? Ever?”

Tohru releases a breath she didn’t realize she was withholding. His gaze is steady, soft, and yet earnest, as if he truly wants to know the answer. She feels her face heat up under the intensity of it.

“Eventually. But not now. Not him,” she whispers back. She doesn’t look away from him. She doesn’t want to. Even though the moment now feels heavy under the weight of her words, under the implications of them, and they add a layer of intimacy to the conversation that wasn’t there before.

“Then who?” he asks. He’s whispering now too.

Tohru squirms, uncomfortable and exhilarated under the moonlight and the shine of his eyes, and she looks away, turning her gaze down to her pink, fuzzy socks.

“Someone. No one. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even really understand why it happened in the first place.”

Kyo’s face scrunches up in confusion and he glances at her incredulously, as if she’s said something ridiculous. The look of it on his face is so funny and unexpected that she giggles at him without meaning to.

“You don’t know why someone wrote you that note?” he asks her, disbelief clear in his voice.

“You have a lot of questions tonight,” she teases him, her chest suddenly feeling lighter now that the tension of the conversation is gone, and the presence of Kyo beside her is making her happier than his absence ever did.

He reaches out, smiling genuinely now, and ruffles her hair, practically destroying the braid she did in preparation for bed.

“Shut up,” he says fondly. “You heard what I said.”

Tohru sighs and unfolds her knees, stretching her bare legs out in front of her. She plays with the cotton hem of her shorts when she answers him.

“Well no one has ever done that for me before, and I don’t remember making enough of an impact on anyone for the idea of having a secret admirer make sense, and I just-“ She sighs again. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Kyo scoffs at her. “Of course you don’t. You hardly see the impact you have on people.”

Tohru snaps her head up to look at him, but he’s not looking back at her. His gaze is focused off into the distance of the city lights. His eyes are far away.

“I mean, you’re just so nice to everyone all the time. And I mean all the time. I swear it’s like inhuman the way you are with people. It would be unbelievable if it weren’t you. And you’re pretty social for someone who primarily hangs out with her two weird ass friends.” He stops to flash a teasing grin at her then, and she can’t help the way her heart seems to sigh at the sight of his smile.

“And you’re also young, and pretty, and _popular_ believe it or not _._ ”

Tohru’s brain short circuits here. She can’t seem to track the rest of his words.

_“Young, and pretty, and popular…”_

_“Young, and pretty…”_

_“… Pretty…”_

_“Pretty.”_

Tohru blinks rapidly, a smile pulling at her lips, her breaths coming fast and restless along with the pace of her heart. She grabs onto his shoulder, almost fisting the fabric of his tee, and he stops mid-sentence to look down at her.

“You think I’m pretty?” she asks. She would be embarrassed over how needy and breathless she sounded if she could feel anything other than the sunlight that glowed warm and heady through her veins.

Kyo’s face goes cherry red instantly, the color contrasting so awfully and so lovely against his orange hair, and he stammers out something that could be words, if they weren’t just gibberish.

But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care.

She’s happy.

“Kyo-kun?” she presses again.

The song of the cicadas are drowned out by the rush of blood that echoes through her ear canals.

“Well- well you’re just- you’re um-“ He pauses and he makes a strange face, his features scrunching up adorably. He looks down at her hand on his shoulder and then back at her, before chuckling darkly to himself. “I mean, you know you’re pretty right? Doesn’t every girl know they’re pretty?” he says nonchalantly, shrugging her hand off of him.

“Not every girl,” she whispers, her smile apparent in her voice.

He looks down at her again, his cheeks still pink, but less so, and even though his embarrassment still lingers in the lines of his face, he looks pleased. Fond and pleased.

And Tohru feels incandescent.

“Shut up,” he tells her warmly, shoving her shoulder with his own, and Tohru, feeling uncharacteristically confident, shoves him back, jostling them both slightly.

She doesn’t move away after. Their arms are pressed together, from shoulder to wrist, and she curls her legs up underneath her to lean a bit more heavily against him. The rough roof tiles bite into her bare legs, but she hardly feels it. She hardly cares.

She sees Kyo suppress a smile out of the corner of her eye.

He lets her lean against him.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed it! 
> 
> P.S: yes that end scene with kyo and tohru is based off of That Iconic Scene from clueless, why do you ask?


End file.
